Heat index over 100, sweat soaking through clothes. Last week was one of those weeks when I was searching for inspiration. Lids heavy from the day, the eyes kept roaming, leaped over to the bookshelf, and landed on Ray Bradbury’s Zen In The Art Of Writing. There are books I go back to again and again—for reminders that it’s okay to struggle. For stories about moments of success, paragraphs that sum up in a few words what it means to be an artist or a writer. I don’t separate the two. For me, writing and art are connected. They collectively make up the Arts.

I ran my fingers over the worn cover, then opened Ray’s book to the Preface. That’s as far as I had to go. Maybe a few tidbits in these paragraphs will have meaning for you, too. There are hours when I stop dead in my tracks; I don’t want to write anymore. Somehow, the practice keeps going. Not perfect. Tracks. Cairns inside eroded pockets of sandstone cliffs.

I enter the Preface right after Ray’s story of the day he breathed a second life into his childhood hero, Buck Rogers:

So I collected comics, fell in love with carnivals and World’s Fairs and began to write. And what, you ask, does writing teach us?

First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.

So while art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

Secondly, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that.

Not to write, for many of us, is to die.

We must take arms each and every day, perhaps knowing that the battle cannot be entirely won, but fight we must, if only a gentle bout. The smallest effort to win means, at the end of each day, a sort of victory. Remember that pianist who said that if he did not practice every day he would know, if he did not practice for two days, the critics would know, after three days, his audiences would know.

A variation of this is true for writers. Not that your style, whatever it is, would melt out of shape in those few days.

But what would happen is that the world would catch up with and try to sicken you. If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

For writing allows just the proper recipes of truth, life, reality as you are able to eat, drink, and digest without hyperventilating and flopping like a dead fish in your bed.

I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.

And that is why I went to my studio and ate up the time with myself. So the world would not devour me. Time to sit and listen to music, to stare out the window, to write a few lines of poetry, to sketch at the ragged edges of the page, to find inspiration on a wall outside Intermedia Arts. Time to take up arms and fight, the smallest battle, the smallest effort to win.

Art changes everything.

Lotus and I will continue to respond to each other’s BlackBerry Jump-Off photos with text, photography, poetry (however we are inspired) for the 52 weeks of 2011. You can read more at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration. If you are inspired to join us, send us a link to your images, poetry, or prose and we’ll add them to our posts.

Hello red Raviners, lurkers, and those who stumble upon us quite by accident!
QM and I have been working hard for what feels like a long time, keeping this blog full of interesting tidbits and more, and, well, it’s time for a short vacation.

I’m heading to Vietnam, where I hope to take photos and eat exotic fruit that I dream about. (Oh yeah, and work. In fact, mostly I’ll work.) QM’s going to putz in her garden and write and get ready for an art event at her studio.
Here’s the basic idea behind our vacation:

From May 11-26, we’re allowing ourselves to be free from the pressure of posting several times a week on the blog;

We’re also likely going to be absent from other blog-related stuff, like reading and commenting on friends’ blogs (although I’m going to miss you guys, and I’ll probably lurk, and what the hey, I bet you one lonely night in Saigon, I’ll even comment);

If we start having withdrawals from red Ravine—itchy fingers, twitchy keyboards, cameras run amuck—we’ll do a spontaneous post or two, but we’re still technically on vacation;

We will tweet now and then, QM from her garden and me from Saigon, so watch our new Twitter widget, which is down the right-hand side of the page;

Mostly we’re going to relax and enjoy the hiatus from electronics.

In the mean time, consider this an Open Mic on red Ravine.

If you’re a regular reader and commenter, a part of this community, drop a line about whatever moves you. And if you’ve never commented before (maybe you worried that we were a bunch of hoity-toity writers, which surely by now you know we’re not) then venture out and let us know you’re there.

One of the things we’ll be doing while on hiatus is thinking about where we want to take red Ravine. So we’d love knowing that you’re out there and hearing what it is that floats your boat.

A few weeks ago, Mom sent me a scan of this old Christmas card. It was after I made a comment on one of ybonesy’s pieces about the process of creating linocuts. I had no idea she had saved it, tucked away in a memory drawer.

There were two Christmases when I wrote long Holiday letters slipped into parchment envelopes with round string clamps; printed snapshots of a plank porch grin somewhere in the Bitterroots of Montana; hand made linocuts with a rectangle of 1/2 inch glass, cattail paper, printers ink, and a baren. Paint was smeared from faucet to jeans. I love getting art-messy.

I look at ybonesy’s detailed linocuts and wonder if people understand how labor intensive the process is. Measuring. Cutting the paper with a straight-line metal ruler. Inking the roller, the clean up, mess, drying period. But it’s all worth it. I want to go on record with that right now.

I’ve been looking at studio spaces again. I need a space to create. And write. I do love being at home. But there is something about getting out of the house that jolts the memory, burns the synapses, jumpstarts the body. And there is the element of community, a vital ingredient. You can’t create in a vacuum. No one can do that for long without losing some semblance of sanity.

I celebrate Winter Solstice this time every year. Honoring the darkness that sits sheltering and cavelike over the Northern climates of this country. It’s Bear energy. Hibernation. West. Introspection. Going into the cave pregnant with potential. Shooting out of the birth canal full of promise. Refilling the well. To create, I have to replenish the coffers. Hold a little bit back for me. Fire in the belly.

Liz will be home from work soon. And we’ll finish our baking. She made the double chocolate walnut fudge last night while I took care of some business items. And tonight, at the end of the darkest, shortest day of the year, we’ll razzle up the cherry oatmeal cookies, the maple glazed walnuts and pecans, and Mom’s family recipe for Southern Rocks. I wrote in a practice the other day, “When Liz bakes, the whole house smells like a Holiday.”

That’s what I want. For the whole house to smell like a Holiday. Scent is powerful. The succulent history of the senses. Connect smell to story. I could tell you a few tales.

One is of Santa, Old Saint Nick. And the other of the birth of a Saint. Don’t forget the celebration of seasons. Winter is delightful. Soulful. Quiet as snow. Dark as molasses.

But you have to make light of the dark. Go inside and write. Visit with the people you care the most about in the world. If that’s not possible, if you are alone, make arrangements to do community service. Give to others. It comes back a million.

Light up the world with blinking strings of dazzle, twittering tinsel, a Pooh tree topper. Of course, I believe in Santa Claus. Are you nuts? That bright red suit can light up these dreary gray Midwestern skies anytime now. I’m ready for Light.

And starting tomorrow, minute by minute, second by second, Spring is on the way.